Bring climate change down to earth

Mukul Sanwal, Jun 9, 2007, 04.27am IST

The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than most people think, especially in the fragile areas where the poor live. Added to this, we face the enormous challenge of satisfying the legitimate desire for a rapid rise in the standard of living, while sharing in the global efforts to protect the planet.

Deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions will only come about by transforming the way in which energy is supplied and used. Three-quarters of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions world-wide over the next 50 years will be in developing countries, as their energy use per capita is only one-fifth of that in industrialised countries, and more than 1.5 billion people have no access to electricity.

At around $3,000 per capita GDP, in PPP terms, energy demand explodes as industrialisation and personal mobility take off, and beyond $25,000 per capita GDP economic growth can continue without significant energy increases, with the absolute level varying depending on national circumstances. With a GDP of just over $3,000, in PPP terms, our energy emissions are following the global trend, but we should be rich enough to stop the growth in emissions only towards the end of the century.

Historical data also shows a progressive reduction in the need for energy to fuel economies. Currently it takes only three-quarters of primary energy to produce one unit of the world's GDP than it did thirty years ago.

For industrialised countries the most important component in the resulting reduction of carbon dioxide has initially been expansion of nuclear energy and lately improved end-use efficiency — efficient vehicles, stricter standards for buildings and appliances and more efficient industrial processes. At current prices, according to estimates of the International Energy Agency, nuclear power is cheaper than gas and almost as cheap as coal.

Coal is abundant, widely distributed and is the cheapest way of generating electricity. Consumption of coal is estimated to increase by over 70% by 2030.

The economic gap between India and industrialised countries is so huge that even reaching per capita GDP levels of middle-income developed countries will require a power generating capacity that, despite using the best available technology to generate power from coal, will lead to large increases in emissions of carbon dioxide.

Even more significant is that economic growth in all the large emitters of carbon dioxide world-wide, except India, is estimated to stabilise around 2050. India, because of its relatively young population will continue to grow till the end of the century. Therefore, over the longer term the potential for significant reductions of emissions of carbon dioxide without affecting economic growth lies in producing around 30% of electricity from nuclear power.

In India, changes are also expected in the nature of precipitation — decrease in precipitation in the dry season combined with extreme increased precipitation over a large area. The declining availability of water for irrigation is already affecting agriculture production.

The unprecedented changes in the climate will have two distinct but related impacts. First, past practices — more investment in irrigation and agriculture — to deal with temporary weather-related drought will not be a solution when drought-like conditions persist because changes in the climate, and their scale is deeper and wider. Second, the impact will be more severe in areas on the margins of deserts and for forest dwellers, where agriculture has adapted to low rainfall but will collapse when the rainfall is further reduced and is erratic. The resulting decrease in productivity will exacerbate existing social tensions, and lead to conflict.

Policy decisions now need to be taken in an entirely different context. For example, how best to spend the recent injection of Rs 25,000 crore in agriculture is one such issue in terms of structural (engineering works), non-structural (conservation) and infrastructure (to support a shift to industry) programmes.

By developing a vision of environmentally sustainable economic growth, which includes sustainable use of natural resources, we can respond to the concerns of a much larger section of the population than the earlier approach of imposing restrictions on the use of natural resources. Sweden now has a ministry of sustainable development — environment is a department within it — with a resultant change in the adversarial relations with business and local communities. We need to consider such a policy, and institutional reorientation.

For India an even more necessary shift will be a reorientation in the management of forests, and evolving the Indian Forest Service into an Indian Conservation Service. Colonial administration broke the link between nature and those dependent on the resource. Over the years regimes for sharing management and benefits with local communities have been instituted. These developments do not go far enough to recognise the central value of ecosystem services.

(The author is with the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, at Bonn. Views are personal.)